World AIDS Day Offers Free STD Testing to Students

For the first time, Student Engagement partnered with Wellness Education and Prevention, Office of Multicultural Affairs and PRIDE to bring awareness of World Aids Day on Dec. 1.

Throughout the day, Novus ACS, a medical center located in Bethlehem, Pa., provided free and confidential STD and STI testing in the Commuter Lounge.

Peer educators from the Wellness, Education and Prevention office dressed as “condom fairies” with glittery wings and handed out pamphlets and, of course, condoms in the University Center.

“The main reason why we wanted to have such a fun event is because we want to break the stigma of people being scared to go and get tested,” said Laura Suits, coordinator of Wellness Education and Prevention. “It’s so important to know what your status is.”

Since 1988, World AIDs Day has been dedicated to raise awareness surrounding HIV and AIDs.

Though the disease is considered rare with fewer than 200,000 cases per year according to Mayo Clinic, one in five college students are affected by STD or STI.

Only half of those students know that they have the disease.

“A lot of STI and STD’s are asymptomatic,” Suits said, “so you don’t know the signs and symptoms of them. That would cause them to then spread the disease when they don’t even know that they have one.”

Gay and bisexual men accounted for 81 percent of diagnoses for youth, according to Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“At the time the first AIDs crisis happened, nobody really cared,” said Shannon Thomas, secretary of PRIDE. “It wasn’t reported in newspapers. It was something that was kept in the dark because it was so stigmatized, even by people who are gay.”

According to Thomas, sexual education today is more broad now than ever. “It’s being coming more of a thing for gay men to wear condoms and to have safer sex. It’s getting better but I think we still have a lot of issues.”